


By Your Grace

by vaarsuvius



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-10
Updated: 2012-03-10
Packaged: 2017-11-24 05:41:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,184
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/631046
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vaarsuvius/pseuds/vaarsuvius
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Haven’t had the time, I know,” you finish for him. “Always the same old song with you.” Cas seems to relax a bit at the trace of fondness that bleeds into your words, and you smile, pushing outwards with your grace to convey encouragement to him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	By Your Grace

Finally, finally, Castiel settles on the seat in front of you. You can’t see his face with his back turned to you, but his state is written all over his body, bowstring taut, practically humming with tension. You tsk softly before placing your hands on his shoulders, pulling the (bloody  _awful_ ) trench coat back and letting it fall.

It took quite some convincing for him to allow you to do this. A lot of  _I don’t have time for this_  and  _this is a_  war,  _Balthazar, there are more important things_. Honestly, you’re not even sure what it is that you said this time to make him give, only that he did, and you’re not going to look the proverbial gift horse in the mouth, or something like that. Human sayings still elude you from time to time.

Castiel exhales quietly, and there’s a rush of displaced air as his wings manifest very suddenly in front of you.

“Cas,” you say, and if possible he tenses up even more at the disapproving note in your voice. It’s very clearly evident that he hasn’t been taking care of his wings. The feathers are ruffled and dirty, dull where they should be smooth and glossy. They stick out at odd angles and you absolutely _itch_  to smooth them down.

“I haven’t had--” Castiel begins, but you won’t have any of that.

“Haven’t had the time, I know,” you finish for him. “Always the same old song with you.” Cas seems to relax a bit at the trace of fondness that bleeds into your words, and you smile, pushing outwards with your grace to convey encouragement to him. If he notices, he doesn’t show it, and you decide that it’s really about time to get to work.

You don’t touch his wings at first. You press the tips of your fingers to the space between the vessel’s shoulder blades where his wings begin and try to gauge a reaction. His grace flickers unsteadily for a moment and you reach out with your own, soothing as you ghost your fingers over the very beginnings of his wings. Lightly, you touch them. Castiel’s brow furrows in confusion and you can feel the uncertainty pulse through his grace as your own flares very suddenly, surprising the both of you.

“Sorry,” you say, letting out a breath you didn’t know you were holding. Not that you need to breathe, but you’ve sort of gotten into the habit.

Castiel closes his mouth, retracting whatever he was about to say. He shifts uncomfortably and the disconnection from his grace startles you so much that you snap back into your vessel fully, just in time to feel its--your--chest constrict painfully. You’re still relatively new to feeling things through the metaphorical lens of your vessel and it hits you like a train (but you’re an angel, so it’s only really a bit of a sting).

You’d love to explain yourself, but what would you say?  _Sorry Cassie, just a bit overwhelmed at touching you again, touching_  you  _and not this vessel for the first time in such a bloody long time_. Time never meant much to you as an angel, of course, but the past few months on earth have taught you a lot about what it means, how your perception stretches and bends instants into eons and millenia into a day. This particular moment has gone on for quite long enough.

You shake away your thoughts and busy yourself again with the task at hand. Castiel is very stiff at first, but for every tiny thrill of your grace as you smooth another feather, there’s a matching little jolt from the angel, every so often accompanied by a small gasp.

“I’m sorry,” he says out of the blue, and you stop for a moment.

“Oh?” you ask, lilting but sincere. You left your disaffected air behind a while ago, probably somewhere with the Winchesters.

“I’m just...” He grasps for words. “I’m not used to being so vulnerable.”

That stings. It shouldn’t, but it does. “You can trust me,” you say, resting a hand reassuringly on the joint at the peak of Castiel’s wing. He tenses again, but relaxes almost instantly and actually leans a bit into your touch.

“Of course,” he says, and it’s warm and strange coming from him and it goes straight to your grace. You reach out to his again, stroking down the length of his flight feathers as you go. His grace meets and melds with yours readily this time and it’s  _ecstatic_. You’re hardly aware of yourself for what feels like a long time but is more likely less than a minute. It’s almost embarrassing how enthusiastically you surge against him but you can’t really help yourself. Nostalgia and sentiment aren’t things you’re familiar with but you suppose they’re fairly close to describing the current state of your mind. If Cas is reacting negatively to any of it he’s doing a very good job of hiding the fact.

When you force yourself to settle back into your vessel Cas has twisted around and he’s smiling the tiniest bit and it looks really good on him. You want him to smile more. You want more than anything for him to smile all the time and for it to be you who brings the curve to the corners of his lips. You know though, inside, that if anyone does that for him it won’t be you, and the knowledge manifests itself in your vessel with a pinched sort of feeling in your abdomen and a temporary clench around your throat. But this is something at least, this is something you can have. This piece of time in a darkened flat where everything is okay and Cas’ eyes are ocean wide and twice as deep, this you can fold up and place in the breast pocket of your mind, closest to your heart, and keep forever.

You kiss him. Your necks are bent at odd angles and one of his wings is brushing up against your arm and Castiel’s grace is aflame with confusion and a jittering, stilted sort of acceptance that rings half like an invitation, but the other half is somewhere else with green eyes and a gunshot smile. This isn’t what you wanted.

You break away, though your grace remains tethered to his as you  _will_  yourself to forget everything about the clumsy, forceful movements of borrowed lips fresh in your mind. Castiel’s brow furrows, eyes narrowed in puzzlement when you look at him again. A hundred different excuses flit through your mind but this is Cas, not some human toy. You’ve already gone too far with this, let things get out of hand, and so quickly too. You don’t know what you should do.

Castiel takes the reins for you. His grace curls gently around yours, a sharp contrast to the frankly shameful way yours practically  _rutted_  against his in desperation. He turns fully around to face you and reaches behind your back, coaxing out your wings from where you’ve tucked them into your vessel. They’re not in the best of shape, but Castiel still looks a bit ashamed at how yours compare to his.

“It would be a better use of time if we each helped each other,” he says logically, breaking the silence. Shifting a bit for a better angle, he brushes an errant feather back into place. He isn’t tender or gentle, but you like that, because it’s the same as he always was, ages ago. His hands are efficient and even a bit rough against your wings and your whole being thrums pleasantly. It echoes into your vessel in short, shuddering breaths.

You reach forward and Castiel bends his wings obligingly. You’d hardly given them a once over the first time and now, like this, you swear to yourself that you'll do it right. The two of you sit together in the quiet dark.

You’re too present, too here to reminisce about eons ago when this was the regular state of things, when  _this_  was more than touching each other all over in the sanctuary of your mingled wings and unsteady voices, when  _this_  was the two of you together always and that was simply how it was supposed to be.

Right now, you can’t think about anything like that, only the way your graces meld together until you’re hard pressed to tell where you end and he begins. You’re busy, so busy mapping and memorizing the exact feel and texture of feathers brushing over the backs of your fingers, committing to memory the hitched, blissful sounds that Castiel makes when your thumb finds an area just below the joint of his wing.

You don’t know if it’s been a day or a second but you’re beyond words now, the both of you, your essences practically bleeding out of the vessels you occupy that just aren’t enough to contain or process your full existences. You’re so close to him, and it’s incredible and terrifying. It feels as though if either of you pushed, just so, if you wanted to, you’d cross some sort of line, some point of no return where the both of you might cross over each other so much that you’d simply cease to be. It’s exhilarating and so, so frightening.

When you separate, it’s explosive. You feel as though you’ve crash landed back in your vessel and your being is shattered. Most of all, though, you feel achingly empty. You flood back into borrowed nerves and open your eyes. Everything is a blur and you hope you haven’t somehow blinded your vessel, but as you regain feeling it comes to you. You’re sitting down where you started, and so is Castiel. Your foreheads are touching just so--almost painful but not quite. You can feel a cold draft blowing past the backs of your calves but only there--you’re so wrapped in each others’ wings that nothing can penetrate. The wind picks up and there’s a tinkle of glass behind you--the two of you must have blown out the windows, somehow.

You can feel the flutter of Cas’ eyelids as he comes back into his vessel. It’s incredibly novel and you think, deliriously, that you would love to feel it again and again. You want to kiss his eyelids and his lovely cheekbones and map out every single part of him with your mouth. You want your noses to touch, cheeks, necks, nuzzling warm and dry and soft. You want to slot yourself against him and somehow knot yourself up together so impossibly tight that your bodies mirror your grace.

For one fleeting, insane instant, you want Castiel all to yourself, grace and body and essence. You would make him happy, so happy he wouldn’t miss the Winchesters, wouldn’t feed himself into the mouth of Hell to save a pair of souls that were beyond saving years before Castiel ever knew their names. You would make it so he wouldn’t need to fix anything, wouldn’t care if the apocalypse came and went, because you would always be there for him, and he would never need anything else.

Cas is better at this vessel business than you, apparently, and it occurs to you that he’s probably been exploding in and out of his vessel since before you left Heaven. He pulls back in a matter of seconds looking only slightly stunned while you’re still reeling, though fortunately broken out of your shameful venture into fantasy. When he retracts his wings the wind bites into your vessel, jerking you rudely back into lucidity.

“My apologies,” he says, and if the sudden stiffness in his voice cuts you, you don’t show it. This was for him, after all. You aren’t trying to send him on some sort of guilt trip like a stricken lover, no matter how you feel. You only wanted to relax him a bit. You’re a little disappointed by the results.

“Same as ever, I see,” you say, matching his rapid change in demeanor by slipping easily into leisurely nonchalance. It doesn’t matter that your poker face is terrible and if Castiel was looking he would see everything, every raw inch of the  _feelings_  that have overwhelmed you like a wave since the moment you discovered them. It doesn’t matter. Castiel isn’t looking. Sometimes you think that somehow, subconsciously, you do it on purpose, on the off chance that he’ll see. But you have no idea what you’d do if he did.

His eyes, icy again, soften for just a moment. “No,” he says, “I’m better. It helped. You helped.” He pauses, trying again to find the right words. “Thank you,” he finally amends. It’s awkward and stumbling, but it’s sincere, and you appreciate it. Really.

“You’re always welcome,” you reply, clapping him warmly on the shoulder.

He smiles again, tiny and barely there, and it fills you with a feeling like sunlight. Then he’s gone in a rush of wings, and the faint scent of ozone and the glass littering the floor is all that’s left.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this a long time ago and never got around to posting it anywhere off of tumblr, so here it is. I'm not even in this fandom anymore but I figured I'd share anyway.


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